


no matter how we choose to live

by bebtea



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: And probably a fair few others, F/M, Gen, It’s Janine heavy, Loving Janine de Luca hours, Set End of Season 2, Spoilers for all of Season 2, They Both Die at the End AU, Violence, also S2 was 3 years ago for me sorry about probable mistakes, blame it on the AU, but they’re tiny, but you don’t need to have read it at all I’ve just nicked the concept, it’s sad friendos, s2 spoilers, this is a hot bloody mess and multichapter now I guess, tiny spoilers for Janine’s backstory from s4
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:34:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23950144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bebtea/pseuds/bebtea
Summary: When Death-Cast contact you, you have less than twenty-four hours to live. There is no way to escape your fate, and they are never wrong.Today, three Abel citizens get that call.OR: Janine gets a bit more warning of what will go down in late season 2 than she does in canon. It doesn’t help.
Relationships: Archie Jensen/Jamie Skeet, Jack Holden/Eugene Woods, Janine De Luca/Simon Lauchlan
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13





	1. Sam, 4AM

Death-Cast do not call Sam Yao, because he isn’t dying today. 

They don’t hit him up on Rofflenet either, which they’ve also been doing in recent months. Sometimes, when they can’t find people any other way, they’ll get in contact with the person’s last known settlement, and for Abel, that usually means ringing Janine at the farmhouse. It’s not always as precise or efficient as it used to be before the zoms - sometimes people don’t get the alert until nine or ten AM, and for many that’s nine or ten hours too late - but otherwise it’s pretty reliable.

There are plenty of people at Abel who disagree, particularly the Runners. The job requires enough cockiness to believe you can always outrun your fate.

At this point in his career, Sam knows better.

Janine also knows better, and proves it by shaking Sam’s bunk at four in the morning. “Get up quickly and quietly, Mr Yao. Be in the kitchens in five minutes.”

* * *

Major de Santa.

Sara Smith.

Simon Lauchlan.

All of them will die before the day is out.

“Are you going to tell them?” Sam asks over a diamond-rare cup of coffee, his hair still sticking up from sleep.

Janine is less abrasive than usual, swilling her coffee around the mug. “I don’t know. Protocol and tradition of course dictate that I ought to, but Ms Smith is in league with Van Ark. Simon would likely not believe it. And the Major...”

“Oh, it’s probably all part of her plan, isn’t it.”

“Yes, Mr Yao. It probably is. I’d be shocked if she didn’t know already.”

They sit in companionable silence for a few minutes. The sky outside is already beginning to lighten. Seconds are ticking down, the last seconds of three of their people. 

“Eight… she's done some terrible things, yeah. And I’m bloody angry. But she’s still one of my Runners.” He puts his mug aside, makes some useless attempt to flatten his hair out. “How am I going to tell Three?”

“Simon is perhaps better off not being told.” Janine says brusquely, and then bites her lip. She looks very young in the early morning, Sam notices. Almost vulnerable with her hair in a low bun, tank top and camouflage trousers swapped for leggings and a faded dotty t-shirt, dog tags traded for a little golden necklace. Janine in polka dots and slippers would be hilarious to him in any other circumstance. He mentally files the image away for the next time she’s being particularly critical.

She sighs. “I am sorry I woke you, Mr Yao. This was… highly unprofessional. It is  _ not _ your responsibility to deal with Death-Cast notifications, or to distribute news of them. They are the private business of the recipient.”

“It shouldn’t be your job either though, Janine. Not on your own. It’s… it’s not fair.”

“Fair or unfair, it makes no difference. It has to be done.”

“Look, I always begged you to tell me if something came up about my Runners, and you always said no. I’m glad you woke me. Gives me some time to prepare. Not like with…”

She doesn’t normally pick up where he tails off, but there can only be one thought behind this. “I didn’t know about Alice either, Sam. She got a Rofflenet alert. She didn’t tell any of us.”

“I know. It’s just, it’s good, right? It’s good to know, so you can say goodbye properly.”

Neither of them bring up that there are fates far worse than death that nobody can predict. There are many things that stop a person saying goodbye for good, more so in this brave new world. Sam recalls Gene’s terror when Jack was missing, weeks of sleepless nights not because he thought Jack was dead - because Jack would have told him and insisted on a full day of eulogising - but precisely because he knew he  _ wasn’t. _

_ “And if he’s not dead, and he’s not here, that means he can’t get back. And if he can’t get back, that means someone must be-” _

“Mr Yao? Under no circumstances tell Runner Five about this.”

Sam startles out of his reverie, knocking over his empty mug.

“They’re on a mission with the Major today to interrogate Ms Smith. For better or worse, Five is the only one who will leave that situation alive.”

“Then they need to know! They could get hurt-”

“They could also be the one who does the hurting. Look, I know that you trust Five implicitly. As I trusted Eight. These are uncertain times, and you shouldn’t be privy to this information. I… I really don’t know what I was thinking.”

“You’re losing your friends today,” Sam says diplomatically. Gently, considering the fact she just accused the person he idolises of treachery and murder. And isn’t that why she really woke him? Because he’s the one person she could count on to be kind? “It’s hard to think.”

“They aren’t even gone yet.” She allows herself one small moment of weakness: she closes her eyes, and lets Sam pat her arm awkwardly. Then she straightens up. “Anyway, as I said. Keep this information strictly to yourself. By the end of today, we’ll know everything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OOP this will be multi-chapter for different POVs, but each chapter will be pretty short. I’m also writing this before I’ve actually finished Adam Silvera’s They Both Die at the End because I, uh... don’t want them to die.
> 
> I’m also taking creative licence and assuming S2M41-43 all take place on the same day.


	2. Janine, 7AM

Whilst the settlement gets up for breakfast she tells De Santa, of course, who gives her nothing more than a grim nod and a firm handshake. No premature grief on her watch.

And then Simon. Oh God, Simon.

He’s silhouetted in her bedroom doorway as the daylight is streaming in, pulling some ridiculous strongman pose, stark naked and dripping water from sneaking through her window to use her private bathroom and she’s fighting back tears like some kind of ditsy  _ fool. _

“Death-Cast rang for you,” she manages. She can’t lie, not to his face.

“So  _ that’s  _ why Sam was blubbering into his porridge,” he says, shaking his hair out like a dog, splattering her with water. “I didn’t think it was that bad, myself.”

“Please take this seriously!”

“I can outrun death, Jenny,” he says, and his smile doesn’t waver, and he’s so ridiculously sure of it that she goes to slap him. He’s well aware of the impulse, and ducks it as her face crumples with a sob.

“Hey.  _ Hey. _ ” He takes her in his arms. “I’m going to be alright. Don’t you trust me?”

“Don’t go on the mission today. When it happens, I want you here.” As if that will help. Her voice is tiny and petulant. Suddenly she’s twelve again and arguing with her parents in a dusty Karachi street, pleading with them not to get in the car, pleading with them to heed the alarm.

“ _ If _ ,” he says into her hair, rocking her gently, left and right. “If it happens. I told you, Jenny, I don’t intend on dying. You’re going to be stuck with me for a long,  _ long _ time.”

Well, fantastic. He’s delusional, and she’s buried her face in his chest now and he smells like pine and bar soap and a little like he’s slept in a bunkhouse with six other Runners in spite of his shower, not that any of that matters, because she will not give in to the luxury of staying in his arms until the end. She’s still got her job to do. She’s responsible. Collected. A figure of calm control. She doesn’t  _ do  _ this. If she can’t force Simon to accept his End Day, it doesn’t matter. She’s the one who has to live with every day afterwards.

“Look, if it makes you feel better, I’ll rock up at the firehouse crèche today, help Jamie out with the kids. Nothing so bad can happen there, yeah? But don’t worry about it. It will all be okay, you’ll see.”

“Yes, Mr Lauchlan. That would be acceptable.” Maybe he’ll die saving the kids. Maybe a brick will hit him in the head. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

“Aye aye, then, Lieutenant,” he smirks, and pulls away. “You got a towel, or shall I treat the quad to  _ this _ ?” He strikes another pose, and she huffs, and they play at normality for a few hours more.


	3. Sara, 10:14

Janine decided to interrogate Eight with the Major after all. For one thing, Five being mute made them terrible at good cop, bad cop. For another, she didn’t want to leave them alone with two Deckers. She told Sara as much, early in the interrogation, let the mask slip just a little.

So now, Five’s ears are still ringing from the gunshot. The Major, shot through the heart at point blank range. Sara’s eyes are wide, too, as if she doesn’t quite believe what she’s done. Janine is slumped, passed out, her arm shattered to pieces. They both stand there for a moment, breathing fast, the air thick and metallic.

Something snaps her out of it, and she dives for the door. Seconds later, Five is on her tail, Sam begging them to stop. “She’s a dead woman anyway! Don’t do it! Abel needs you, I-“

_Need you?_

“I’ll be taking that,” Sara puts her hand out for the headset, jamming her gun into Five’s temple. The younger runner is trembling with so much fury that for a minute, Sara wonders if they might just try and kill her with their bare hands.

They wouldn’t stand a chance, of course, but they’re angry enough to attempt it.

“You should have listened to Sam,” she says, as they throw the headset at her with unnecessary force. And are they-

Their eyes are filled with tears that they blink back with some effort.

The weather is all wrong for a scene like this: it’s gorgeous, the brilliant sunrise of earlier giving way to deep blue skies and puffy popcorn clouds and buttery sunshine. Sara’s Conor drew a picture of a sky like this once; the four of them stood hand in hand beneath it with gaping smiles and fingerless hands, the sun gawking down from the corner of the page. She’d stuck it on the fridge with a lighthouse magnet they got on that godawful caravan holiday in Yorkshire, next to Adam’s _Star of the Week_ award, pride of place. 

It was spattered with their blood, the last time she saw it, the same crimson as her perfectly still hands.

In the present, she stares Five directly in the eyes, lends a note of anguish to her voice. “You should have listened to Sam.”

Can they read her face? Can they sense the truth, the grand plan, the strings pulling strings? Sara probably knows more about Five’s past than anyone else in Abel. They’re smart. They should be able to figure things out, if they push through the rage and fear.

“ _You’re a dead woman, Sara! Give up now! It’s not worth it!”_ Sam’s voice is tinny, and far away, and she doesn’t know if she’ll ever hear it again when she crunches up the headset beneath her heel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I appreciate all your comments so much ❤️


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